Radio communication systems are rapidly growing. More and more users are utilizing the radio communication systems and the traffic in these radio communication systems is increasing. To cope with this growth, more radio network nodes (e.g. radio base stations (RBS), Node B's, eNodeB's) and more cells are being added to the already existing radio communication networks. At the same time, new Radio Access Technologies (RAT) are being added and more frequencies are being used.
To facilitate efficient mobility (with minimum interruption) between cells, cell neighbor relations (NR) are needed between the cells. The NRs are needed between cells using the same Radio Access Technology, RAT, network. Also, the NRs are needed between cells using different RATs. Conventionally, the operator of the radio communication system has to keep record of NRs of neighboring cells spanned by radio network nodes manually e.g. for the purpose of handing over to a new cell or re-selecting cell. This is a tedious and error-prone task. Furthermore, NR information may have to be changed rather frequently due to network modifications, e.g. when network nodes are added or removed (e.g. a cell is added or removed). The rapid increase of the number of cells in today's radio communication systems thus makes the manual configuration of NRs relatively resource demanding and, hence, there is a demand for functions that automatically identify and setup NRs.
Various attempts have therefore been made to facilitate the updating of neighboring cell information in an increasingly automatic manner.
To this end, the international patent application PCT/EP2011/063615, published under WO 2012/019994 A1 on 16 Feb. 2012, presents network nodes and methods for updating neighbor cell information in a radio communication system. According to this document, the radio communications system comprises a mobile terminal, a first network node controlling a first cell, a second network node controlling a second cell, the first network node broadcasting a first neighbor cell list, and the second network node broadcasting a second neighbor cell list. The method comprises the steps of receiving, by the second network node from the mobile terminal, an indicator, with the indicator indicating a missing neighbor cell relation entry in the first neighbor cell list, the neighbor cell relation entry representing a neighbor cell relation between the first cell and the second cell; and sending, from the second network node to the first network node, a cell identifier, the cell identifier uniquely identifying the second cell, and first cell-specific information technically characterizing the second cell, the first cell-specific in-formation permitting updating the first neighbor cell list with the missing neighbor cell relation entry. Thus, when a neighbor cell relation is missing, such missing neighbor cell relation can be added to a neighbor cell list afterwards.
While the above methods and networks nodes may be efficient in many respects, there is yet a constant need and desire to improve upon existing radio communication systems and to provide solutions that operate with fewer drawbacks than the pre-existing radio communication systems.